4AD Celebrate Record Store Day With Two Releases

17th April 2010

4AD help celebrate Record Store Day 2010 today (Saturday, April 17) with two one-off limited releases only available from the participating independent stores.

Compiled as a limited 12" release for Record Store Day 2010 on Saturday April 17, Fragments From Work In Progress finds various artists from the 4AD roster exclusively showcasing rough drafts and material ahead of each act's forthcoming work.

Being released in the label's 30th year, it features session tracks and demos, capturing an upfront snapshot of some of the thought processes each artist is currently going through.

The EP reveals the first recorded material from Blonde Redhead as they put in place their follow-up to 2007's meteoric 23 with a demo of the track 'Not Getting There'. Fellow New York outfit Gang Gang Dance announce their arrival on the label with a work of typical ingenuity whilst Los Angeles' notorious lo-fi stalwarts Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti showcase a track taken from their recently recorded and yet to be aired 4AD Session; a flavour of what to expect from the group's highly anticipated debut for the label, as surreal as is it is sublime. Elsewhere, Tune-Yards inspire with a raw and soulful demo cut, 'You Yes You', a track that has started to appear in their live set and The Big Pink contribute a previously unheard track, 'With You', the first indication of what to possibly expect next from the band.

A strictly limited 12" release, complete with artwork from v23, Fragments From Work In Progress will be exclusively available today (April 17 2010) through all participating shops on Record Store Day. It will also not be made available digitally or be used for promotion.

Record Store Day 2010 also sees the release of The Life of the World to Come: A film by Rian Johnson, a very special filmed live performance of The Mountain Goats' recent album of the same name. Shot with minimal cameras and with no allowance for retakes, John Darnielle plays through the whole album, switching between piano and guitar, resequencing the album's running order in the process while joined by a special guest for two songs.

The film was made by Rian Johnson - an American writer/filmmaker whose credits include The Brothers Bloom (2008) and Brick (2005) for which he won the Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2006, Johnson directed The Mountain Goats music video for 'Woke Up New'.

In support of Record Store Day, 4AD is making available 1500 copies of the film on DVD, which will be for sale at stores participating in RSD. The limited edition DVD is presented within a gorgeous custom designed 12-page book with liner notes by John Darnielle, created specifically for this project by Horse & Buggy Press in Durham, NC. Check here for a list of stores.

The film will also be screened at select venues in the US in the coming months. Here is the schedule, with screenings continually added:

Here is more about the film as explained by John Darnielle:

“Rian and I met when he shot the 'Woke Up New' video at his Little Italy apartment; I'd spotted a credit to a band called "the Hospital Bombers Experience" in the end-credits to his film Brick and recognized a reference to a song of mine, and I looked him up, and we hit it off. He's been listening to my stuff since very early on, and I think he really gets the kind of axis I try to ride when I write: a kind of meeting point between a primitive formal style & a naked, raw feel. So when I listened to the demos to this album, I thought, I'd like to play them that way, too, and have that playing captured somehow. And then there was a line "I saw some old friends as I came to the city gate" in a song that didn't end up on the final album, which made me think of going back home to Claremont and working with friends, and playing the songs in the building where I took the state exam for young pianists when I was eight years old, not long after we'd moved to Claremont from Milpitas. So I wrote to Rian & sent him the album & we bumped ideas back and forth until we settled on the idea of a single live performance with a few cameras in a private space and we got really excited about it, and in early August I went out there and we did this thing that I think captures a face of the songs that I'm unlikely to catch elsewhere: before anybody else has heard them outside of the people making the record, almost all of them being played in a non-studio-or-living-room space for the first time ever, no re-dos for mistakes, only a few cameras on us & circling us as we sing and play.”

As they come to a close of their Australian tour with a show in Perth tomorrow evening, Mountain Goats return to the UK for the following dates in September: 8th September Leeds, Brudenell Social Club, UK - (MORE) 9th September London, KOKO, UK - (MORE) 10th September End of the Road Festival, UK - (MORE)

For more on Record Store Day 2010 and your local participating store head to the official site.